Too devoted to the conventions of travelogues past, but offers an unexpectedly enlightening introduction to an unfairly...
After quitting his job, open-minded author Maslin loaded a backpack and hitched to Iran, where he spent nine weeks debunking Western misconceptions.
Travel narratives often conclude that preconceived notions about exotic lands are often absurdly erroneous, a grand tradition that Maslin’s debut enthusiastically perpetuates. Unsatisfied with life in a cubicle, the author decided to take a sojourn to Iran, despite warnings and admonitions from friends who, under the influence of Western media, denigrate the country as little more than a safe haven for terrorists. Casting aside those prejudices upon entering the country, he quickly discovered that, rather than being hated, he received the royal treatment from nearly everyone he met. So enthusiastically welcoming were the residents, in fact, that they generously purchased food and drinks, offered their beds and provided recommendations for and transportation to places of historical interest. The unexpectedly universal hospitality was accompanied by widespread disdain among the people for politicians ranging from the former ruling Shah and current President Ahmadinejad to George Bush and Tony Blair. Conversely, Irish pop singer Chris de Burgh, one of the only non-Iranian artists sanctioned by the government, is revered. Maslin provides a balanced blend of social commentary—including discussions of the role the United States and Britain played in manipulating the Iranian government, and younger Iranians’ fascination with Western culture, including rap music and pornography—and travel guidance, including notes on various bazaars, historical sights and churches). Occasionally the author’s good-natured attempts at humor veer off track and transform his well-meaning hosts into stereotypically crazy foreign caricatures worthy of Sacha Baron Cohen.
Too devoted to the conventions of travelogues past, but offers an unexpectedly enlightening introduction to an unfairly misunderstood country and culture.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-60239-791-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A bold rallying cry that should help in the continuing fight for LGBTQ rights. Read alongside Baumann’s Love and Resistance...
A showcase of the work of activists and participants in the Stonewall uprising, published to coincide with the 50th anniversary.
With his discerning selections, editor Baumann (editor: Love and Resistance: Out of the Closet into the Stonewall Era, 2019, etc.)—assistant director for collection development for the New York Public Library and coordinator of the library’s LGBT Initiative—provides a street-level view of the Stonewall uprising, which helped launch the LGBTQ rights movement in the United States. Through his skillful curation, he offers a corrective for what is too often a sanitized, homogenous, and whitewashed portrayal of academics and professionals about the event sometimes termed “the hairpin drop heard around the world.” By gathering vibrant and varied experiences of diverse contributors, the collection reflects the economic, gender, racial, and ethnic complexity of the LGBTQ community at a time when behaviors such as same-sex dancing were criminalized. Featuring essays, interviews, personal accounts, and news articles, Baumann’s archival project accurately and meticulously captures an era of social unrest; the conversation about institutional discrimination and inequality presented here remains as revolutionary today as it did 50 years ago. The anthology invites us to look closely at the unresolved social dynamics of a population defined by its diversity, confronting sexism, racism, classism, and internalized homophobia alongside a broad view of institutional discrimination, heteronormativity, and sexual repression. Voices of significant leaders sit beside stories from participants behind protest lines, police raids, and street harassment, and the mounting frustration with an oppressive status quo becomes palpable on every page. The first-person narratives collected here effectively spotlight the social inequalities surrounding the LGBTQ community, many of which persist today.
A bold rallying cry that should help in the continuing fight for LGBTQ rights. Read alongside Baumann’s Love and Resistance and Marc Stein’s The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History for a full education on the events before, during, and after Stonewall.Pub Date: April 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-14-313351-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
One may quibble with the title: this is a study of Islamic Orientalism solely, of Western representations of the Near East, with little or no direct reference to Persia, India, China, Japan.
Professor Said (Comparative Literature, Columbia) explains the limited focus as both methodological (coherence over exhaustiveness) and personal: he is an Arab Palestinian. But among Eastern civilizations, as he recognizes, Islam is a special case, particularly in relation to Christian Europe: a "fraudulent," competing religion (doggedly miscalled Mohammedanism), a longstanding military threat, and all the more, therefore, as affront. Singularity, however, is no handicap to what is essentially a case study of Western ethno-centrism and its consequences, while the very persistence of the generalizing and dehumanizing attitudes that Said condemns, unparalleled in regard to either Africa or the Far East, argues the urgency of the enterprise. Drawing, most prominently, upon Foucault's history of pernicious ideas, Said traces the development of Orientalism from Silvestre de Sacy's fragmentation of Oriental culture into "a canon of textual objects" and Ernest Renan's incorporation of the fragments into the new comparative philology: "the Orient's contemporary relevance [was] to be simply as material for European investigation." Ascribed traits—passivity, eroticism, etc.—became fixed; travelers, ostensibly sympathetic, added exotic tales; and the presumed inferiority of Islam served as the pretext for its political domination, its supposed backwardness the excuse for economic intervention (with even Karl Marx writing of England's "regenerating" mission in India). Not until after World War II does Islam enter the American consciousness, and then—with Arab specialists in attendance—as "the disrupter of Israel's and the West's existence." Said's recent citations are devastating, and add force to his final challenge: how to avoid all categorization of one people by another?
The book is redundant and not always reasonable, but bound to cut a wide swath and leave its mark.
Pub Date: Nov. 30, 1978
ISBN: 039474067X
Page Count: 417
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1978
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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